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EG report that Easy, developers of Battlefield Heroes, will be announcing a “completely new” Battlefield title this Friday. Easy’s general manager also let it be known that the title won’t be (a) Battlefield 3, or (b) Battlefield Assault, which is the name of a domain EA picked up recently.

Sometimes I think RPS is two sites. One of them is called Hot Manshoots, and the other is called The Indie Lagoon, and I don’t think they can co-exist forever. There will come a time when we’ll all have to pick sides. Which side would you fight for, readers?

Indie lagoon forever.
Manshooting was already boring in 2007 & other than the very notable exception of Team Fortress 2 (which doesn’t really fit the “angryfaced manshooting” template anyway) it’s thus far been unchanged even with multiple releases of the same tired old franchises rehashing the same tired template every year.

I agree with this sentiment. Doesn’t mean I’m not still holding my breath hoping for something new and exciting. The mixture of FPS games with RPG elements is fantastic, and even more so those that include co-op.

What I’d really slay babies for is a fantasy based FPS that focused on a wealth of spell based skills, where aiming would be an important factor (no auto-aim please). Oblivion did this but the variation in spells and spell animations was pretty limited.

hot manshoot is awesome, and frankly was the only reason i picked up on rps in the first place, but since then i’ve discovered the joys of indie awesomeness; but as i’ve got the attention span of a newborn kitten, and like shooting men in the face i need the happy happy joy joy of indieness interspersed with man shoot.

You see, I spend a lot of my time playing manshoots and all. But I probably wouldn’t come here if that was all it offered. At the same time, I love some indie gems that are out there. But what I really love, what I constantly want to see are games that expand the interaction we can have. I want to see first person games that break out of the “refrigerator box” model (looks like Brink might be the first to do this since The Opera). I want to see games where we can interact beyond blowing things up, or “use x on y to solve puzzle”. And neither hot manshoots resistant to change as they are, or the majority of Indie games, typically being focussed on refining one key mechanic deliver on. So I keep coming to RPS for neither of those sides – I’m one of those bystanders in the middle who’ll get cut down in the crossfire :(

(Basically, every time I fire up RPS, I hope to see an article that basically says “OMG, it’s like Deus Ex all over again. It makes all other games look stale and limiting. BUY NOW!”. Sadly it doesn’t look that likley, although Dwarf Fortress (for all its unplayableness), Minecraft and AI War have all been lights of hope.

A city where the Manshooters would not fear the haughty condemnation of the Indies.
Where the marksman would not be bound by petty sportsmanship.
Where the innovative would not be constrained by the derivative.
And with the sweat of your index finger, Rapture can be your city as well.

My amount of interest in Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Halo, etc, is best measured with an atomic scale and a pair of tweezers. I’m rather more interested in Brink and a few others, but if it weren’t for Team Fortress 2 the whole genre of first-person shooters could disappear into the nether void and I wouldn’t give a hoot.

Come to think of it, I’d like to see, oh, a five-year moratorium on first-person shooters. If you’re working on one release it by end of 2011. Release anything that could be described as an FPS in the period of 2012 – 2017, all your profits are confiscated and you go to prison. I daresay we’d see a hell of a lot more original ideas and maybe even whole new genres spring up.

How cynical you are, Kast! And don’t get me wrong, I liked FPSes as much as the next man. Possibly more than most. But the genre is beyond saturated. I’ve filled up on shooty shooty the bad men with the assault rifle so much that it’s coming out of my ears and nose. There seems to be an infinite and paradoxically steadily growing number of FPSes out there – hell, the rate at which their production is growing is growing – and they’re increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other in any way.

I’d choose the Indie Lagoon because I don’t understand anything that’s related to war, uniforms or guns. But the manshoot reports are entertaining to read even when they make no sense to me so please keep them and the indie stuff together on the same site.

By the way, what does “Cover me” mean ? I’ve heard the expression a million time without really caring but it’s an order in a game I’m playing now

I don’t think the question should be “indie vs FPS”, but more of a “real PC game vs repetitive, badly-ported console game”. I love FPS games, but I absolutely despise BF:BC2, MW2, MoH and all of the other terrible on-rails console shooters.

If I had to choose, I’d go indie, definitely; but I still like old FPS games and some of the newer ones (like ArmA, Red Orchestra, Stalker series etc). I like RPS because it doesn’t pander to the “triple A” (why are they called that? They’re all so terrible!) FPS titles like certain other sites *cough*PC Gamer*cough*, even if you do still report on them. I like that you guys tend to be much more excited about indie games and games that look like they aren’t just crappy ports, than about titles from EA, Ubisoft and Activision.

The reason I came here was because of the great pieces on Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. The reason I left PC Gamer was because of the amount of coverage of “triple A” titles compared to the smaller titles.

Am I allowed L4D(2) on the grounds that it was an indie TC before being bought up by Valve? Please?

I don’t find myself in the position of caring less about MW & derivatives (played CoD4, call back when you do something different kthxbi), but I do love me some shooty goodness when done properly. Besides, I suck at platformers.

Besides, are we really saying that we want to stop talking about STALKER (with or without full stops)? (slinks back to KotOR, picked up for pocket change in the last Steam sale, which is neither)

Noooo, don’t stop doing either Indie or Commercial games! That’s why I love RPS so much. You guys report on both. Also, subscribed. I might even be able to swing a few bucks in the future (really poor right now). Keep being awesome!

Given that you can make a game that is first-person-literally-anything-other-than-shooting and it will inspire considerable critical commentary all over the net, with many going well out of their way to overlook any gaping flaws it might have, (such as it not making sense or being incredibly boring), it would seem that FPS dominance has outstayed it’s welcome in the minds of anyone with more than a passing interest in gaming and a capacity or predisposition to think about it, for at least a generation. Also, if said game has any kind of interpersonal element at all, at least one person will describe it as “moving”, and may even claim it made them cry.

Ordinary manshoots can provide some low-grade fun, but only in the way that masturbating in the dead of night in an underground toilet because you missed the last cab and have to do something can be considered fun. Otherwise, they are lifeless. They are from a cold and dead place which is poisonous to creativity, maturity, progression, and everything good.

Battlefield: Good Company could be a real shooter simulator. Y’know, spend 35 hours on patrol, then have somebody get sniped and wait another half-hour for an airstrike to arrive to destroy the building the sniper’s in.

if it has more than 64 players per battle, then I don’t really care what timeframe/line this game it.
maybe itsa BF: 2242, but I bet its going to be … different.
I really doubt it’ll be a continuation of of of DICE’s things.
here’s betting its F2P